Conventional body support such as box springs or mattresses typically include an array of coil springs for supporting the body. The upper ends of the coil springs are attached to a wire grid made from a low carbon wire of limited resilience. The perimeter of the grid is attached to a border wire. Although such coil spring arrangements have provided adequate body support, they are relatively expensive to manufacture and assemble into box springs or mattresses. Additionally, conventional box springs and mattresses are large and cumbersome to handle in storage, transporation or shipment which, of course, increases the ultimate cost.
Moreover, it is not uncommon for a coil spring manufacturer to compress or deform coil spring units layered one on top of the other into condensed or compacted multilayered packs for shipment to a box spring or mattress manufacturer. The aforementioned step is performed by means of a press machine enabling the spring units to be compressed to reduce their dimension. The coil spring units of each pack are held in their compacted state against return to their normal or unstressed condition by means of strapping applied about the unit. The spring units of each pack being compressed, the strapping is under a great amount of tension. When the packs arrive at the place of the manufacturer, it is, of course, necessary to sever the strapping around the packs in order to release the spring units for installation into box springs or mattresses. This, of course, is a dangerous step because of the high degree of tension to which the strapping is subjected by the compression of the coil springs.
As can be seen from U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,279, issued Mar. 22, 1983, one proposal has been made for providing a wire foundation unit for a box spring which unit can be shipped to the box spring manufacturer in a compact state. The manufacturer would erect the foundation wires and then fix by staples, rigid struts between the wire unit and the base to permanently secure the wire unit in the erected position. The box spring manufacturing process would then be completed by providing the conventional layer of padding on the top of the wire foundation and a sheet covering or casing about the entire unit. However, once the manufacture is completed, the box spring is no longer collapsible and thus must be shipped in its expanded or full-size state to the point of retail or use whereby the same storage and shipment costs result at this point as with conventional box springs.